The Jerilderie man who could have been king

He was known to Jerilderie locals as ''Kingsy'' but Michael Abney-Hastings was in fact the 14th Earl of Loudoun. If history had taken another turn, he could have been king of England but lived out his life in Jerilderie, where he has died aged 69.

Instead of ruling Britain, he was content to immerse himself in Australian country life as a beer-loving jackaroo who became a rice farmer and shire councillor.

He arrived in Australia as 18-year-old Michael Hastings in 1960, not long out of the elite Benedictine Ampleforth College in York - one of his mates was Andrew Parker-Bowles, first husband of Camilla, now wife of Prince Charles - with £50 to his name, content to subsume his then title of Lord Mauchline in order to experience the wide open spaces of an egalitarian society with none of the stuffiness he had left behind.

He inherited the title 14th Earl of Loudoun from his mother, the 13th Countess of Loudoun Barbara Abney-Hastings on her death in 2002 - his father was captain Walter Strickland Lord - and it wasn't until two years later that he got the shock of his life when he was informed in plausible detail that he was the rightful heir to the British throne.

In his typical laconic style, he recalled thinking at the time what people around Jerilderie would think - ''Oh, it's that eccentric Pommy bastard again!''

The turn of events began with a phone call from a BBC producer asking if he could visit to discuss evidence pointing to Hastings being the real king of England. ''I thought they were pissed,'' he told one interviewer.

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The Channel 4 documentary crew, led by the actor Tony Robinson, duly arrived at his modest single-storey weatherboard house in Jerilderie and laid out the evidence on his dining table as they filmed the documentary, Britain's Real Monarch.

The program was based on the research of Glasgow University mediaevalist Michael Jones, who claimed to have unearthed a document at Rouen Cathedral proving that at the time of the conception of Edward IV (who reigned, with interruptions, from 1461 until 1483), his supposed parents, Richard Duke of York and Lady Cicely Neville, were more than 160 kilometres apart.

Richard was fighting the French near Paris, while Lady Cicely was at court in Rouen. Jones argued that Edward was the product of an adulterous liaison between the Queen and a French archer. The theory, if true, would invalidate the claims of every English monarch since.

Since Edward was illegitimate, Jones argued, the royal line should have descended through his (supposedly legitimate) younger brother George, Duke of Clarence (who would, according to tradition, meet a sticky end in a butt of Malmsey wine in 1478). With the help of Debrett's, Jones had traced the Plantagenet blood line down through the generations to the Earl of Loudoun - Mike Hastings.

At first Hastings thought the whole thing was ''bullshit'', but soon realised there was substance to the claims. "The more

I watch the documentary, the more I'm convinced that they're right and I probably should be the King of England," he said.

But he was never going to act on the evidence and pursue any claim. ''I take my title very seriously but the thing about being king is a bit of a joke,'' Hastings said. ''I've no intention of chasing over there and laying claim to palaces and crown jewels. I'm quite happy in Jerilderie."

He said residents of the town got more excited than he did, to the extent that when he arrived at a friend's house for Christmas dinner, "they all stood up and sang God Save the King as I walked in". In fact, far from being ''a mad monarchist'', he was a firm republican who believed Australia should be a republic.

Hastings said he sympathised with the Queen because of the onerous job she had, cooped up in Buckingham Palace under constant scrutiny and unable to live a normal life. ''It's a shit of a job. I wouldn't take it for quids. What a terrible way to live. They can't even pick their noses without someone writing about them.''

Hastings was born in and grew up in a small house at Hastings, Sussex. The Earls of Loudoun had once owned castles and sporting estates, but while the title would eventually pass from his grandmother, the 12th Countess of Loudoun, to his mother (Scottish titles can pass through the female line), it was his aunt, Jean, who inherited the Loudoun estates in Scotland.

His parents' marriage in 1939 did not survive the war.

The earldom had been created by Charles I in 1633 for his ancestor John Campbell. However, the first earl became a leading member of the Covenanter movement that opposed attempts by the King and Archbishop Laud to impose a new liturgy and prayer book on the Church of Scotland.

The fourth Earl raised a regiment of Highlanders to fight the Jacobites during the 1745 Rising and later became an unpopular commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America.

Despite his Protestant antecedents, Hastings was raised a Catholic. On the death of the 12th Countess in 1960, his mother, Barbara, inherited the Loudoun titles, as well as the baronies of Botreaux, Stanley and Hastings and moved to a small house in Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire. Her son was given the courtesy title of Lord Mauchline.

He sailed for Australia under what was called the Big Brother scheme. He signed on for two years as a hired hand. For the next few years he jackarooed on sheep and cattle properties, put his hands to orange picking, worked for a stock and station agency, and sold encyclopaedias door to door.

''Me and a mate started selling Encyclopaedia Britannicas in Bondi, but it was so hot … we started going into pubs,'' he recalled. ''We got so drunk that we couldn't remember which one we left them in.''

He was soon drawn to country life, and particularly a local switchboard operator, Noelene McCormick. They married in 1969 and moved to Jerilderie, where he worked and farmed for Rice Research Australia.

His wife, whom he described as ''a fiery Australian with red hair", died two years before the BBC crew arrived on his doorstep. She would not have been impressed. "She would have told me to bloody well behave myself and not get carried away by all this."

Over 48 years in Jerilderie, he became a solid citizen, serving as a shire councillor, chairman of the local historical society - and perhaps the greatest indication that he had became a dinky-di Aussie, he was appointed a life member of the Jerilderie (Australian rules) Football Club.

Hastings, whose funeral service was held in Jerilderie yesterday, is survived by three daughters and two sons. His eldest son, Simon Abney-Hastings, Lord Mauchline, who was born in 1974, inherits the Loudoun titles.